Executive Summary

How do partner-practitioners1 in the Music for Health in Morecambe project understand and communicate its value and why? This report shares findings from ‘Working Together’, an action research project designed by More Music and International Centre for Community Music (ICCM), led by Dr Ruth Currie.

Working Together explores how partnerpractitioners understand and communicate value within Music for Health in Morecambe: a partnership programme of three music groups facilitated by More Music, an NHS Social Prescribing team, and local wellbeing organisations. The project aimed to explore how those working within a music social prescribing programme understood and communicated value. Understanding this was important because there is very little research into how partnerships in arts and health operate and collaborate towards shared health aims concerning their sectoral policies and partnership practices. We were particularly interested in this because we wanted to contribute to developing a robust and critical knowledge-exchange between the cultural sector, health and social care sectors, and academic partners to complement the wealth of research considering the possible impacts and relationships between music and health. Particularly, to understand the processes of working together across policies and perspectives of music’s role in challenging health inequalities within the specific context of Morecambe. Doing so, to better understand the influencing factors on partnerships within arts and health and the role partners and practitioners have in driving place-based action in this context. Three questions guided our enquiry:

• What are the challenges associated with arts and health partnerships in

Morecambe?

• How does More Music work as a cultural leader towards developing partnerships within health settings?

• How do More Music and their health partners communicate the potential value music might have within a health setting?

• What is needed to ensure the project remains relevant and sustainable?

Through interviews, an online event, and knowledge-exchange with partnerpractitioners within this research, we identify a divide between how experience and evidence are valued in the cross-sector partnership work of Music for Health in Morecambe. Specifically, that experience is valued as a situated and relational process between the project workforce and participants. It is an opportunity to learn from and make music with each other in ways that can facilitate constructive health-based outcomes. Evidence, however, is perceived dominantly across the partnership to have value for policymakers and funders within its current articulation. Specifically, that evidence is qualitative or ‘scientific’ and that gathering it is often an ill-fitting process within the nuanced experience of taking part. Working together critically as a research partnership made it clear that there were sectoral influences about what evidence was, alongside underpinning values that positioned music as ‘unquestionably good’. These perceptions supported narratives of what kinds of evidence needed to be produced and why. This led to perceptions that the nuanced experience of the music projects didn’t create the ‘right’ types of evidence; therefore, it was distinct from people’s experience. However, working together critically within this research process highlighted how partner-practitioners learn and share. Particularly, how they experience this as knowledge-exchange, which is a valuable aspect of their practice. This report discusses ways that partnerpractitioners may value Music for Health in Morecambe as part of healthy living. However, the idea that evidence is for policymakers and distinct from the experience requires attention within the partnership.

1 We refer to people taking part in this research as ‘partner-practitioners’ because the project workforce influence both the partnership and practice of Music for Health in Morecambe through their approach to working together for health.

Further to this, findings from this research suggest that practitioners have strategic influence when modelling the experience of the project in partnership contexts. Exploring this further may challenge and address the perceived dichotomy between the value of experience and the value of evidence. Understanding these partnership practices more explicitly may support understandings of the policy contexts of collaborators in music and health programmes. Music leaders in this research appeared to have unique influences. It is necessary to understand this in greater detail to communicate the strategic impact they can have in designing and developing music programmes with social aims. Specifically, to scaffold the divide between evidence and experience, raising the visibility of nuanced place-based practice in and as policy. This report shares the learning from our collaborative research. It suggests that knowledge-exchange processes have value for how partnerships can work together across policies and perceptions of music’s role in challenging health inequalities towards place-based social action. To support this, it is important to:

• Review the partnership development needs for each of the three projects within Music for Health in Morecambe.

What are the different requirements each need to develop sustainably? • Through such review, what specific responsibilities do partner-practitioners take on, how does this fit their current strategic priorities, and where may this identify a development need?

• Within the current partnership model, which we describe as a ‘delivery partnership’, More Music fits within partners’ service aims. They do so, by plugging into the objectives and networks of their sector or organisational priorities.

What are the limitations and development opportunities of this kind of partnership for More Music and their partners? Is this a sustainable partnership model, or may this reproduce or contribute to distinctions of evidence and experience.

• There is a developing culture of knowledgeexchange in both the project activities and through partner-practitioner engagement in research. As a way to identify common priorities and identify ongoing development needs, this approach may support a more negotiated and transparent partnership model. Practitioners in the project appear well equipped to communicate the benefit of learning together through their collaborations. What changes can be made in Music for Health in Morecambe, to support strategic space for joint reflection?

• Whilst evidence is for policymakers and experience is bound within the process of taking part, an unhelpful distinction separates policy from practice.

This appears to be stimulated, in part, by current reporting requirements and sectoral values regarding health. Moving forward, how does the partnership understand who decides what evidence is for Music for

Health in Morecambe and why?

Finally, taking all of these into consideration can support decision-making about what might be scaled-up as part of challenging health inequalities and how the learning within this process is communicated. Underscoring all of this is understanding what kinds of partnership working between health, culture and well-being charities will support the most significant reduction in health inequalities in Morecambe. In particular, as a mechanism for contributing to healthy living, as part of a healthy place; not as a reproduction of instrumental impacts that are driven by policy or that may overstate what music can do, but as a reimagining of how partnerships through music and health can become part of a critical community-led ecosystem that shape placebased creative health. The proposition that music and health partnerships can contribute to place-based health is not a new one. However, the focus towards how partners work together and getting a better understanding of the lenses that their projects, impacts and responsibilities to place may be seen through still receives little attention in arts, health and community music literature.